Alien Resurrection(Or: How We Can Keep Milking A Franchise)

Where, oh where do I begin with this?  Given how Alien 3 ended, I don't think anybody would have expected there to be a fourth outing.  Between 1994 and 1996 I had started hearing rumors on the web about a fourth Alien film.  What was even more absurd was that it was going to involve Sigourney Weaver's character again.  How?  She died at the end of the last film, which ended that trilogy perfectly, I thought.  I would assume that because of how screwed up the production was on 3, that Fox wanted another crack at the franchise.  The problem is, they wanted another movie that centered around Ripley.  So, how could they do that?

200 years after Ripley(Sigourney Weaver)sacrificed herself on Fury 161, a United Systems Military vessel has recovered blood samples from the prison planet and cloned her.  Why?  Because she was carrying a Queen Alien inside her when she died, so apparently it became a part of her DNA.  After several attempts, they finally succeed in cloning her so they can retrieve the queen.  Thing is, some of that Alien DNA got mixed in with Ripley's so she's a bit of a different creature herself.  Later, a motley crew arrives on the ship to deliver hijacked cryotubes loaded with people so they can breed the Aliens and experiment on them.  Given the unpredictable nature of the beast, things go wrong(surprise, surprise) and the creatures escape.  Oh, boy.  While Alien 3 had a very troubled production, the film still wound up being a very bleak and dark experience which worked in the movie's favor.  Alien Resurrection?  This movie is just so damn quirky and bizarre it just doesn't fit in with the others.  The tone is so different.  Instead of a bleak and grim future, we have a fairly upbeat attitude about things with jokes and other sorts of nonsense.  I think you can credit that with French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet.  There's a good amount of humor in this movie, and strangely enough, it works for this particular movie.  However, the Alien universe isn't exactly a happy-go-lucky universe.  It's supposed to be dark and terrifying.  There are some pretty disturbing elements in this movie, I must say, but the overall feel doesn't seem to feel right with the series.

Cloning in a movie isn't an original idea, it's been done for decades.  The most successful movie that featured cloning was Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park.  But that was done with a different intent.  In Alien Resurrection, it's used as a plot device to bring back a character that died for a reason.  Why?  So scientists can study her and experiment on her and blah, blah, blah.  The thing I find interesting about this movie is that it  was written by Joss Whedon, the guy who did Firefly and The Avengers.  Who knew?  You can tell the movie has his mark on it by some of the dialogue and some of the situations.  Whedon has always had a way of making things....strange enough to creep people out and still make it work.  I think that's part of where the humor comes from.  The writing isn't awful, but it definitely isn't up to Whedon's usual fare.  I mean, to get into a secure part of the ship, you have to breath on the device?  It's a really bizarre security measure.  Fingerprints and eye scanning aren't good enough, but somebody's breath?  Really?

Visually, the film has a very unusual aesthetic.  Instead of the Gothic architecture of the last movie, the ship is very military, kind of like the second movie, but also incorporates some medical stuff in it as well.  The mercenaries ship, The Betty is a run-down P.O.S. that barely functions.  There are a lot of corridors in this movie.  I guess the filmmakers were still trying for the whole claustrophobic vibe of the original Alien, but they didn't really succeed.  The creature designs are actually pretty cool.  The newborn Alien which shows up towards the end of the film is particularly disturbing because it's basically a literal half-human and half-Alien hybrid.  It's hideous.  It's still an interesting design however.  One of the more disturbing aspects of this film show up when Ripley discovers the previous attempts to clone her.  This is not a pleasant scene to watch, because of these "misfires."  It's genuinely unnerving.  This is a more action-oriented film than the previous movies, so we would expect some decent action.  We definitely get it.  We have some interesting weaponry that deals out the damage.  Christie(Gary Dourdan)has two pistols that are attached to his wrists which he can whip out at any time.  Johner(Ron Perlman)has a gun disguised as a canteen.  Vrees(Dominque Pinon)puts together a shotgun with pieces that are a part of his wheelchair.  Some of the guns fire lasers,  though.  There's an underwater section that's really intense with the survivors being chased by the Aliens.  There is a decent amount of action in this movie that surprised me.

On the acting side of things, we obviously have Sigourney Weaver.  I don't think this is Mrs. Weaver at her best.  It's played a little over-the-top.  Winona Ryder plays Call, the newest member of the mercenary band who's on a secret mission of her own.  Ron Perlman is the resident tough guy, Johner.  Michael Wincott is the leader of the mercenaries, while J.E Freeman plays Wren.  The surprising cast member is Brad Dourif as Gediman.  Brad Dourif really plays these bizarre characters very well.  Ron Perlman basically steals the show, though.  Every time he's on the screen, he's being a smart-ass.  I'd be lying if I said this movie wasn't entertaining.  It really is.  It just doesn't feel like a proper Alien film.  It's not dark enough and it's too damn goofy.  The CGI Aliens just really feel out of place as well.

Not all franchises need to center around a particular character.  Indiana Jones and Rambo I can understand because he IS the main character.  But franchises like Star Wars and Alien don't need to be centered around a main character.  There are a lot of directions that the Alien franchise can go.  We don't need Ripley anymore.  Her story has been told.  I understand that Sigourney Weaver would like to play her one last time to finish her story.  As far as I'm concerned, Ripley's story ended in Alien 3.  Looking at all the comic books and novels that take place in the Alien universe, there's a lot of potential for other stories.  Ridley Scott returned to that particular universe with Prometheus, but it wasn't an Alien movie.  However, there are only so many surprises that the xenomorph can provide as a movie monster, and we have seen a good deal of it already to know that it's going to take some extraordinary writing to make that creature mysterious again.  Unfortunately, with two spinoff movies, Alien Vs. Predator and AVP: Requiem, the franchise has been damaged to a certain point where only time may help it recover.  Overall, Alien Resurrection succeeds as a decent sci-fi flick, but it kind fails as an Alien movie.  I'm going to give it a  7.5/10.  It's fun, but it is the black sheep of the franchise.